Big men a big Nuggets’ problem?

If there was one knock on the Nuggets roster last season, it was the relative lack of size.

It still is.

Nene – 6-11 – is at center. Chris Andersen – 6-10 – is the team’s main shot blocker. The Nuggets have just one player that stands 7-feet tall, and that’s little-used Johan Petro. Last season, because of Andersen’s larger-than-life presence guarding the basket, the Nuggets were able to get away with being a tad undersized. They double-teamed when they needed the extra help.

Maybe that happens again this season, but because the Nuggets have had problems slowing down competent 7-footers this preseason, the men in the middle bearing watching closely in today’s and Friday’s games against the Lakers. Centers have fairly well eaten the Nuggets alive in the first five exhibition games. It’s not an alarming trend, but certainly one to keep tabs on.

Indiana’s Roy Hibbert – 7-2 – gutted the Nuggets’ interior defense for averages of 20.5 points, 10 rebounds and 6.0 blocks in the two games played in Taiwan and China, respectively. Hibbert shot 58.3 percent from the field. By contrast, Hibbert has averaged just 6.0 points 4.0 rebounds and 1.7 blocks in the Pacers’ other three games until last night’s 20 points and five blocks against Orlando.

Portland’s 7-footer, Greg Oden, who has had a very good preseason overall, scored 16 points on 5-of-7 shooting and added seven rebounds and two blocks against the Nuggets.

Now the Nuggets face L.A.’s Pau Gasol, who they had immense trouble guarding last season, and Andrew Bynum, who like Oden has had a coming out party in the preseason.

The reason it only bears watching and not worrying about is because the Nuggets haven’t made a huge point of taking any team’s big man out of the game during the preseason. And while some 7-footers have been highlighted, this extends to those just under that score and rebound well in the post, also.

“I agree that they had good games,” Nuggets coach George Karl said. “But I think we have defensive schemes that we haven’t used in those games. Hibbert getting as many touches as he got was kind of a surprise to us. Portland going to Oden as their go-to guy in the fourth quarter; letting Nene play, we would have rotated him out when he got his fifth foul, rather than letting him go. Not having Nene down the stretch is a coaching ploy.”

“As we go into a strategy game there will be more attentiveness to, ok, Hibbert gets the ball here and we’re going to double him we’re going to front him, we’re going to do something different. We didn’t have strategy. We were just seeing how guys would react.”

Still, the Nuggets will again have to figure it out as the season goes along. Helping matters is the departure of Shaquille O’Neal from Phoenix to the Eastern Conference’s Cleveland Cavaliers. Houston will be without injured Yao Ming all season, so the Nuggets dodge two big bullets there.

But they have 24 games combined against L.A’s Gasol and Bynum, Minnesota’s Al Jefferson, San Antonio’s Tim Duncan, Phoenix’s Amare Stoudemire and Portland’s’ Oden. Not to mention two each against Cleveland’s O’Neal, Indiana’s Hibbert, Orlando’s Dwight Howard, New Jersey’s Brook Lopez. That’s a total of 32 games – almost 40 percent of their season against formidable post players.

Denver has to once again mask an undersized presence inside. Their success in that area could mean the difference between taking the next step to the NBA Finals or coming up short a second straight year.